Wen-hao Tien: Home on Our Backs Virtual Opening

“The incentive, the seed, were other people’s stories” —2020 Artist-in-Residence Wen-hao Tien during the virtual opening for Wen-hao Tien: Home on Our Backs on Thursday, February 4, at 6:00 pm.

Over 80 attendees came to the virtual opening of Wen-hao Tien: Home on Our Backs as part of the public programming for Pao Art Center’s 2020 Artist-in-Residence exhibition. During the event, Artist-in-Residence Wen-hao Tien discussed how her year-long research on Boston Chinatown history, including the shared stories of nomadism, displacement, and resiliency among so many Chinatown families, informed the artwork for her exhibit.

Tien’s research eventually brought her to Boston’s Mount Hope Cemetery, where many early Boston Chinatown immigrants are buried. While visiting the grounds, Tien said, “I sensed the complex feelings of homesickness, pride, and regret, especially when I came upon a lot of deteriorated and nameless tombstones. Regarded as a virtue in Chinese social thinking, all things return to their source in old age, 落葉歸根, much like expatriates returning home.”

Tien was joined by Ben Sloat, multimedia artist and Assistant Professor and Director of the MFA in Visual Arts at Lesley University. They had an in-depth conversation on her work and how it connects to the current issues impacting the Asian Pacific Islander community. They also discussed Tien’s playful reimagining of materials in her work: red plastic bags transformed into a dress, piles of laundry redrawn as a scholar rock, toy parts, and keepsakes recast as a shadow on the wall. 

When describing Tien’s work, Sloat said, “On one hand, you’re engaging with a living history, and Chinatown is the source and shepherd of that history in a way that other neighborhoods are not. At the same time, you’re really dealing with our contemporary situation.”

Wen-hao Tien will be sharing more about her artwork and research during Laundry Rock: Histories of Laundries in Boston Chinatown, a Tunney Lee Memorial Lecture organized in partnership with the Chinese Historical Society of New England on Saturday, March 13th at 2:00 - 3:30 pm. Learn more and register.

Wen-hao Tien: Home on Our Backs is currently on view on our website and at Pao Arts Center by appointment until June 26, 2021.

Our gallery is open to groups of six or less by appointment. Email Cynthia Woo to schedule your visit.